Third Wednesday in Great Lent
Kathisma 8 (Psalms 55-63)
“In God we shall work mighty deeds, and He will bring to naught them that afflict us.” (Psalm 59)
The People of God had been on the retreat. It was you versus the world, and the world was winning. God had cast you off. He had destroyed you. He had been angry and filled with wrath, but He also had pity on you. The Psalm says that God had “shown His people hard things, and made them to drink the wine of contrition.”
But now things are about to start turning around. Why? Look at those words above: pity, contrition. The Lord had been driving His people to contrition, that is, to sorrow over their sins. That is usually where things start turning around.
This is one of the reasons we discipline ourselves during Great Lent. It isn’t as a way of enduring hard things, but rather so that this pivotal point where things turn around becomes clearer to us. That is what the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord is. It is the most radical pivot imaginable, where all the hard things that have ever come upon Mankind suddenly start to turn around.
Great Lent is a season of preparation. It is a time for us to prepare for Pascha, for the sudden shift from losing to winning, from dying to living, from defeat to victory. The Psalmist commemorates that sudden change in the life of God’s People – the change from living in defeat to suddenly turning and conquering their enemies, razing their cities, and emerging the victors! That is what we experience in our death and resurrection in Christ in Holy Baptism, and Great Lent is a time of preparation for Holy Baptism.
For those of us who are not catechumens, but are already baptized, what is the purpose of such preparation? Look at the Psalm. “Wilt Thou not, O God, go forth with our forces?” The answer from the superscription of this Psalm is, “Yes.” We prepare for war – a war we cannot lose, because God Himself is in our midst.
“In God we shall work mighty deeds!” writes the Psalmist. Prepare for that. Prepare to work mighty deeds. Whether catechumen or baptized faithful, the Church is arrayed for war. Our enemies are sin, the devils, and even Death. Their defeat is a foregone conclusion, but by every evidence, the enemies of God’s People are still at large, still exercising their power. The time of retreat is over. It is time to go on the offensive! “In God we shall work mighty deeds, and He will bring to naught them that afflict us!”
